


Little Stranger

by PyrrhaIphis



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Delusions, Fantasizing, M/M, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 00:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14008401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyrrhaIphis/pseuds/PyrrhaIphis
Summary: Three versions of an AU in which the rooftop scene was merely Arthur's fantasy, and he has to accept that reality when he and Curt finally do meet in 1984.The first two were written to be a Yuletide treat, but I didn't feel like either version quite fit the request, so I didn't turn either one in.  (The third was written much later, and is kind of over-the-top.)  Further explanation provided in the notes.





	1. Subdued Version

**Author's Note:**

> So, the Yuletide request was made by thegirlwiththemouseyhair (request at https://thegirlwiththemouseyhair.dreamwidth.org/337324.html), and after I finished my NaNo novel this past November, I thought I'd give it a try. The pertinent part of the request is this:
> 
> "Some viewers have the theory that the rooftop scene didn’t happen and was all in Arthur’s head. I disagree, but, damn, that could be a hell of a story, where Arthur’s haunted by this fantasy that never even happened. How would that play out when he apparently does meet Curt in the 80’s? There could be so much mind screwy angst and such a damaged Arthur (sorry, Arthur)..."
> 
> My first attempt to fill the request was way too typically me: rather light and fluffy despite the AU. Then the second version was...well, it felt a lot closer, but still didn't seem quite right. I couldn't think of quite what to do to fit the request properly, so I decided to just let it sit. This first chapter is actually that second version, since I feel like it's the one that best fits the request. Then chapter two is the original, fluffy version.
> 
> Aaaaaand chapter three is the extreme version. Which I normally would not bother posting, because it's completely insane. But since it does sort of fit in with these other two, I figured I'd just tack it on to the end. It is 100% crazy, so please proceed with caution. :P

            As the unappealing show began, Arthur shut his eyes and tuned it out, allowing the familiar old fantasy to play out before his eyes.

            It had taken his younger self—the self he had wanted so badly to deny ever since arriving in New York—years to perfectly map out every nuance of how that night should have gone, and his work had paid off; the fantasy rose up vividly in his mind, far more real than any memory.  The sensation of Curt’s thumb on his lips, the pressure of his arms around Arthur’s bare torso, the feeling of being gently penetrated…they had only come from Arthur’s teenage imagination, but he could remember them far more clearly than he could remember most of the real sex he had had in his teen years.  Even as a teen, Arthur must have hated himself for how readily he retreated into his fantasies to find contentment:  why else would he have imagined that Curt told him to “make a wish” when the whole encounter was nothing _but_ a wish?

            That was the worst part about the Brian Slade story being cancelled.  It had robbed him of an opportunity to speak to Curt Wild at long last, to finally meet face-to-face the man with whom he had had such an intense love life in his dreams.  To maybe, somehow, make that wish come true, nine years late.

 

***

 

            Curt Wild just wasn’t the sort of person you met in the back of a normal, well-lit bar.  Curt Wild was the sort who only went drinking in clubs filled with the rich and disaffected, or in smoky, atmospheric bars where you could expect to see nothing but wall-to-wall celebrities, even those already in their graves.  And yet…

            “You’re Curt Wild.”  Arthur hadn’t meant to say it, but the realization had hit him too strongly to keep silent.

            Curt didn’t appreciate the attention—of course he didn’t!—but Arthur couldn’t back down.  He had to keep talking, to get Curt talking if he could.  It was impossible to make his old wish come true—he could no more go back to being nineteen than he could go back to his family—but he had new wishes, new fantasies…

            Maybe it was hopeless.  Maybe he’d been a journalist too long.  The only way he could keep the conversation going was to pursue that cancelled story, to ask about Brian, to ask about Brian’s new identity without saying his new name.

            He would never make his wishes come true that way.

 

***

 

            _“A man’s life is his image.”_

            The sparkling emerald pin looked appallingly out of place on Arthur’s usual drab clothes, but he couldn’t bear the thought of not wearing it.  Even if Curt had only wanted to be rid of it, all that mattered was that it had been Curt’s, and that he had chosen Arthur to be its new owner.

            So Arthur found himself spending what little money he had on a new wardrobe.  Just a few new shirts, mostly.  Nicer shirts, pressed and buttoned, in crisp colours that accented the pin nicely.  Without even meaning to, he found himself putting more care into the way his hair looked.  It was nothing like the beauty regimen he had gone through back when he was living with the Flaming Creatures, but the effect was enough that Arthur was very conscious of it.  Even other people were noticing; he found himself getting more attention from strangers on the street.  Most of them were women, unfortunately, but it was a start.

            Arthur kept a look-out whenever he went out, hoping against hope to run into Curt again, to meet with his approval.  Though there were a few times he thought he caught a glimpse of him across a crowded subway station, or halfway up a staircase, Arthur never found any opportunity to get close, or even confirm that it was really him.

            Then, one swelteringly hot summer day, when Arthur was pressed right up at the front of the unruly crowd waiting for a rush hour train, he was astonished to see the doors slide open and let off Curt himself.

            “It looks good on you,” he said, giving Arthur a quick, appraising glance.

            Arthur hadn’t gotten any further than to say “Thanks,” before Curt had vanished back into the crowd.

            Not the meeting he had been wishing for, but it wasn’t bad.  It would do for now.  But maybe someday…


	2. Fluffy Version

            As Tommy Stone walked out onto the stage to take his place before the roaring crowds, a melancholy filled Arthur all the way out in the cheap seats near the back.  Despite his poor vantage point, he could see it, now that he knew what he was looking for.  Felt as though he was daft for not having seen it before.  (Not that he had ever wanted to look at Tommy Stone before tonight.)  The way Tommy moved, overflowing with confidence, so certain he was the darling of every heart…it was every inch the way Brian Slade had walked out onto that stage ten years ago.

            The only differences were the music, and the way the proceeding affected Arthur.  Ten years ago, he had been thrilled to death to be there, and then horrified beyond belief by the bullet and the (fake) bloodstain.  Now?  He had so little interest in the performance and so little respect for the music that they couldn’t hold his attention for more than a few seconds.

            His mind retreated inwards, inwards and backwards.

            Arthur’s every particle relived that beautiful concert nine years ago.  Watching from backstage, barely able to blink in his heated desire as Curt Wild performed his set.  Getting away from the Flaming Creatures as the performance ended, moving ever closer, in a desperate bid to meet Curt as he left the stage.

            That thrilling, terrifying moment when Curt looked right at him.

            What had his expression meant?  Was he confused to see a strange boy backstage, staring like the fans out front?  Insulted by Arthur’s costume that so imitated Brian’s style?  Or maybe…

            Two evenings stretched out from there in Arthur’s mind’s eye.

            Catching Curt’s eye at the after-party, only to follow him up to the roof, where they spent half the night making sweet love, then talking for one brief dawn as if they were equals, instead of a fabulous star and his adoring fan.

            The heart-rending next morning, when Arthur awoke, curled up in a ball on the floor at the foot of Ray’s bed, unable to understand why he was back in their flat, instead of on the roof of the club with Curt Wild.  He had spent years arguing—more with himself than with the Creatures—that it _had_ happened, that he _had_ slept with Curt.

            Even now, he wanted to believe it.

 

***

 

            Arthur hadn’t expected to see Tommy at the stage door.  Watching him spout such trite garbage, saying things Brian would never have said in a thousand lifetimes, while he still had Brian’s every movement, every mannerism…it was downright comical, and inspired in Arthur a rarely indulged fantasy of rocking the boat and causing havoc just because he could.  Maybe it was his still-fresh memory—dream—of having Curt fill him on that rooftop that gave him the boldness to actually act on that fantasy.  Whatever it was, it didn’t give him the courage to stick around and witness the chaos, and he was soon retreating to a nearby drinking establishment.

            The bar was unpleasant in every respect, particularly in the Tommy Stone music blaring out of the jukebox.  It was more a desire to escape the music than anything else that prompted Arthur to move as far into the back of the bar as he could.

            Or maybe it was fate.

            To think, running across Curt Wild in a seedy, low-rent bar, sitting there as if he was just an ordinary bloke…

            “Who the hell are you?”

            Curt’s words were the worst possible wake-up call, a thousand times worse than waking on the floor at the foot of the bed had been.

            Curt had never seen him before.  The blank, angry stare was proof of it.

            That beautiful night had truly never happened.  Just a dream, sent by too much mescaline and teenage libido.

            Arthur could feel his world crumbling in on itself, but he did his best to persevere.  To pretend he was capable of that ‘stiff upper lip’ shite that his father used to go on about.

            How many more chances would he have to be face to face with Curt Wild?

 

***

 

            “You look tired, honey,” Mary said, peering down into his face as she turned from the water cooler.  “Aren’t you getting enough sleep?”

            Arthur tried to sit up straight, even as he shrugged.  “Suppose so.”  His dreams, over the last month, had been enough to make any man swear off sleep for the rest of his life.  Dreams of Curt staring at him in anger and disgust, ripping the pin off his lapel, calling him a thief and a liar, and swearing that he couldn’t be interested in someone as mundane as Arthur if his life depended on it.  Of Tommy Stone’s bodyguards dragging him in to see the singer, whose anger at his true identity being discovered were soon eclipsed by his rage at Arthur for coveting Curt—coveting Tommy’s property—and mockery of the very idea that Curt would ever lower himself to noticing Arthur.

            Mary clucked her tongue, shaking her head.  “Had a fight with your girlfriend, have you?”

            Arthur did his best not to grimace at her sick sense of humour.  “That’s not it,” he sighed, once again filled with the bitter wish to go back in time and prevent that one ex-boyfriend from convincing him that it was perfectly safe to go out on a date to a normal restaurant.  If they’d gone to a gay bar, like Arthur had wanted, Mary could never have come across them holding hands at their table.  So far, she didn’t seem to have told anyone around the office—Lou almost certainly suspected, but then he had always seemed to suspect—but she evidently got a thrill out of tormenting him like this.  “I’ve just been stressed.”

            Mary patted his head as if he was a child.  “At least the weekend’s coming up!” she reminded him.  “Keep your chin up until then.”

            Arthur grimaced.  She wouldn’t be so cheerful if _she_ was the one being asked to write a bloody puff piece on children’s cinema for the weekender.  Still, at least it wasn’t as _personal_ as the last one he’d been asked to write.  He tried to use that to force himself to soldier through it, but he was still exceedingly ready to leave when the end of the day rolled around.  Ready to leave, and ready to hit the pub.  Not that there were any good pubs anywhere near the _Herald_ offices.  Or, in fact, any at all on this entire continent.  None that he’d discovered, anyway.

            As he headed down the stairs into the subway, Arthur’s mind was mostly focused on where he could go to get a drink, and just how much of a drink he could have without risking missing work tomorrow.  A little way down the stairs, however, his mind was forcibly blanked.

            Coming up the other direction was a painfully familiar face above a beat-up black and tan leather jacket.

            Despite himself, Arthur stopped dead on the stairs, ignoring the complaints of the New Yorkers behind him as he turned to stare up after Curt.

            Was this…could this be…?

            Curt didn’t remember him—no, Curt had nothing _to_ remember.

            But that didn’t mean that _Arthur_ didn’t remember.  Everything that had happened.  And everything that _hadn’t_ happened.

            Arthur shifted out of the way of the people behind him, and dashed up the stairs after Curt.  He came to a sudden halt just outside the station, where Curt had stopped to light a cigarette.

            “Ah, um, I…” Arthur started, awkwardly aware of every tiny motion he made.  His limbs felt as though they were each ten times too long for his body.

            Curt just looked at him, then dropped his matchstick and ground it out under his foot.  “You’re that reporter,” he said, looking Arthur over slowly.  “From last month.”

            Arthur nodded.  “Yes, I…uh…I was wondering if—er—maybe I could buy you a drink?  If you’re not busy…”

            The first reaction was a slow exhalation of cigarette smoke.  Then Curt shrugged.  “I guess so.”  He started walking down the street without waiting to see if Arthur was following him.  Not that there was any chance of Arthur failing to give chase!

            How many more chances would he have to spend time with Curt Wild?

 

***

 

            The bar Curt had led them to was a quiet, dirty hole-in-the-wall.  Arthur rather suspected it didn’t even have a liquor license.  It certainly wasn’t up to any health codes.  When the barman asked Curt if he wanted his beer on tap, Curt laughed rather than answer.  Arthur answered.  He was _not_ risking having his beer in a horribly filthy, unhygienic glass maintained by a man who looked like he’d never washed even his hands, let alone anything else.

            They took their bottles of beer and headed to a small booth near the back of the all-but-empty bar.  “You’re not looking for a story, right?” Curt asked, staring at him suspiciously, as soon as they were both seated.

            Arthur laughed, and shook his head.  “No, I just—I just wanted to talk to you.”

            “About?”

            “Uh…anything, really.”

            Curt raised an eyebrow, and took a drink from his bottle.  “Are you a fag?”

            If Arthur had gotten his bottle to his lips, he would have choked on his drink.  As it was, he nearly swallowed his tongue.  “What…?”

            “Just wanna know if it’s talking or fucking you’re after.”

            Arthur couldn’t meet his gaze.  Was he that transparent?  “Just—just talking…unless, um, unless you…”  He coughed, rather than finishing his awkward, burbled sentence.

            Curt laughed.  “You must be new to this.”

            “Not really.”  Arthur fidgeted uncomfortably, still unable to lift his gaze back to Curt’s face, despite that everything inside him was on fire, urging him to look, to move closer, to do anything that might bring him into true contact with Curt.  “Just…well…not…um…with—with such a big star…”

            “Oh, are you a fan?”

            Arthur couldn’t stop himself from looking up at that.  Curt looked like he meant the question seriously.  “Of course I am!”

            Curt shrugged.  “No need to get snippy.  You just don’t look the type.”  He chuckled.  “New to the scene?”

            “Been with it longer than you have.”

            “Okay, I don’t buy that.  Not a word of it.”

            Arthur scowled.  “I was already a fan of Brian’s in 1972.  Had you even _heard_ of him yet?”

            Curt winced, and he took a deep slug from his drink.  “You were a fan, but you weren’t actually _part_ of the movement,” he insisted, an intense look in his eyes daring Arthur to argue.

            “I spent three years living with the Flaming Creatures.”

            Curt’s eyes widened, the intensity gone.  “Shit, really?”

            Arthur nodded.

            “Fuck.  What’re you doing dressed like _that,_ then?”

            “It’s not that different from how you’re dressed,” Arthur pointed out.  Maybe Arthur’s shirt was a bit more worn, and his khakis weren’t as tight as Curt’s jeans, but…

            “Guess not,” Curt admitted.  “I was never really one to swan around in all that glitter shit anyway.”  He chuckled.  “Bet _you_ were, if you were with the Flaming Creatures.  They must have dressed you up like a doll.”

            Arthur’s whole face felt hot.  “They—they did,” he admitted.  And he had loved every second of it, to be honest.  The attention, the caresses, the words of admiration that he had never known before (or since), of course he had loved all of it.

            “How old were you?”

            “Seventeen, when I first met them.”  A nostalgic smile spread across Arthur’s face.  He had been insensible to it at the time, the danger he could have put himself in, that first night in London.  There were plenty of artists on the glam stage who would have taken advantage of him and cast him out, possibly with far fewer possessions than he had arrived with.  Meeting the Creatures had been the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him.

            Curt let out a low whistle.  “Bet you were pretty fucking cute back then.”

            “That—that was, um, what they said…”

            “Some blush you’ve got going.”

            “Please…don’t toy with me.”  If Curt was actually interested, that was one thing, but if he wasn’t…Arthur couldn’t stand the idea of having his desires crushed again.

            Curt chuckled, shaking his head.  “So, what did you want to talk about?” he asked, putting out his cigarette.

            Arthur shrugged.  “Anything.  Everything.”  He shut his eyes, not wanting to see the disapproving look on Curt’s face.  “Have you ever thought about quitting smoking?” he asked, after a bit of a wheezing cough escaped his idol’s lungs.

            A bitter laugh prompted Arthur to open his eyes again.  “Seems like everyone’s always getting on my case about that,” Curt said, with a miserable sigh.  “It’s not that I particularly like it.  Believe me, I’ve seen all the evidence about how it’s ruining my voice, gonna give me cancer and make me die, all that shit.  I know.  I should quit.  But it’s just never seemed worth the effort.  No one gives a shit about my singing voice, and there’s no one who’d even notice if I dropped dead tomorrow.”

            “That’s not true!”  Arthur bit his lip, horrified at his own outburst.  “You still have fans…”

            “I guess.  Without a recording contract, that doesn’t mean shit.”  Curt grimaced.  “And guess who’s in so tight with all the labels that no one gets to record a single note if he says different?”

            “Why?”  The part of Arthur that had still wanted to see the ideal Brian Slade even in the corporate sham that was Tommy Stone ached with an undefined pain.  “Why would he try to stop your career?  He—I thought he loved your music…”

            “That was then, this is now.”  Curt scowled at his own words.  “That’s what people usually say, anyway.  Fuck if I know.  I can’t…I don’t want to talk to him like that.”  He smiled, bittersweet.  “He used to send me backstage passes with full access.  I could have walked right into his dressing room, asked him anything I wanted.  Suppose that’s what he wanted me to do.  But I couldn’t.”

            Arthur nodded.  His press pass had allowed him backstage access, but he hadn’t taken advantage of it.  Now that he thought about it, that was odd; all those other journalists at the stage door, they clearly _hadn’t_ had backstage access, or they’d have been asking Tommy those vapid questions in private, rather than shouting them where all the others got the benefit of them.  “He doesn’t send them anymore?”

            “It’s been a year or so,” Curt sighed.  “Guess he got pissed that I never used them.”  Curt looked at him sharply.  “If you’d been me, would you have used them?”

            “I don’t know.”  It was hard to imagine any of the Creatures turning into anything half as hollow as Tommy Stone.  And Arthur’s relationship with the Creatures had never been what Curt’s had been with Brian.  “Probably not.”

            Curt nodded, looking vindicated by Arthur’s answer.  They sat in silence for a few minutes, drinking their beers with an awkward tension hanging in the air above their table.

            “Do you—are you close with Mandy Slade at all…?” Arthur asked, hearing his voice nearly break on ‘close.’

            “Not really.  We see each other sometimes, but…fuck, you know what Brian put us through.  There’s days when just the _idea_ of Mandy is a knife in my throat.”  Curt sighed.  “There’s other times when I feel like she’s the only one who can get what I’m going through.  I’m sure she feels the same way.”

            Arthur nodded, hearing some of Mandy’s words flashing through his mind.  The ‘real’ Curt, as opposed to the ‘fiction’ that Brian had fallen in love with…which one was sitting across from Arthur right now?

            “Why, did she say something about me?”  Curt’s voice was strangely wounded, like a child’s.

            Arthur laughed, and shook his head.  “Nothing about you as you are now.  And, really, all things considered, she was surprisingly kind to you in her stories.  Blamed Brian, not you.”

            “Then why ask?”  Curt aimed a suspicious stare at Arthur over the rim of his beer bottle.

            “I, uh, I saw you backstage together once,” Arthur admitted.  “You looked so close…”  Almost romantic, really.  All the more reason he had wanted desperately to believe their night on the rooftop really had happened.

            “When was this?”

            “February of ’75.  At the Death of Glitter concert.”

            “Huh…”  Curt pondered that a moment, taking a small drink from his bottle.  “Oh, right, that one.  Jack’s big swan song.”

            Arthur nodded.  Why Jack Fairy had suddenly retired from music after that concert—despite that his album with Curt was still topping the charts at the time—had been a subject of no small debate, both among the music monthlies and at the Creatures’ flat, but no one had ever come up with an answer, other than that Jack Fairy enjoyed being enigmatic.  “I’d hoped to meet you, but you weren’t at the after-party.”

            “Yeah, Mandy insisted on taking me and Jack out drinking.”  Curt let out a sad chuckle.  “Spent most of the night trying to find places to go where none of us had ever been with Brian.  Not that London has many places like that.”

            Arthur laughed.  “I can imagine.”

            Another unexpected silence fell over the table, and Arthur tried to distract himself by having some of his drink.  An unfamiliar brand, it was even worse than the usual American piss.  What he wouldn’t give for a proper lager!

            “So, what were you doing in London at seventeen?” Curt asked.  “No way you’re from that far south originally.  Not with that accent.”

            Suddenly self-conscious, Arthur hardly wanted to open his mouth and let out any more of his embarrassing accent.  “I, um…I suppose you’d say I ran away from home…”

            Curt smiled grimly.  “Your folks found out you liked men?”

            Arthur nodded.

            “Yeah, I’ve been there.”

            Arthur struggled to keep his journalistic instincts under tight guard.  He wanted desperately to ask if Cecil’s story was true, if Curt’s parents had really tried electroshock treatment on him—if the partner his mum had caught him with had been his own elder brother.  But how could he possibly ask that?  It wasn’t any of his business…

            “Something bothering you?”

            Arthur shook his head.  “No, just…I don’t want to pry…”

            Curt laughed.  “I’m sure you could find it in print if you looked hard enough.”  A scowl contorted his lips.  “According to one of my ex-managers, some motherfucker out of a Detroit college wrote up a big article on it at the time.  The lurid depravity to be found among the trailer park trash.”  He laughed roughly.  “Not that he was that honest about it.”

            “Curt…I…you don’t have to—”  Arthur stopped as Curt fixed him with a cold look.  “I don’t want to ask you to talk about anything…unpleasant…”

            “I’m used to it.”  Curt shrugged.  “More than happy to change the subject.”  He took another swallow from his bottle.  “So,” he asked, with an almost cruel grin, “what’d your folks find _you_ doing?”

            A few gasps and sputters were all Arthur could produce.  His whole body felt like it was on fire, and the memory—burned into his brain by years of self-inflicted torture—of that photo of Curt and Brian, and the look on his father’s face…

            “Must’ve been pretty bad,” Curt concluded.  “Your mom walked in on you getting reamed?”

            Arthur shook his head weakly.  “Nothing—my father found—it wasn’t anything involving…other people…”

            “They kicked you out for having gay porn?  Shit, your folks must be even more repressive than mine.  And I grew up in the fucking Bible Belt.”

            “Please…I don’t want to talk about it…”

            Curt shrugged, and took another drink of his beer.  He scowled as he put the bottle down.  “I’m getting another,” he announced, before leaving his seat and heading back over to the bar.

            His absence gave Arthur a chance to calm down, to search his mind for _something_ they could talk about.  Something that wasn’t Brian.  Something that wasn’t going to torment him.  He really should have had a plan when he asked to buy Curt a drink.  But he hadn’t expected to run into a star—even one whose career was sinking into obscurity—in such a mundane setting.  He hadn’t been prepared.

            As Curt was standing at the bar, a woman came up to him, started fawning on him.  From Arthur’s uncomfortable vantage point, he wasn’t sure if she was a fan, or if she was just propositioning him.  Whatever she was saying, Curt seemed interested in it, watching her face—and her overly large chest?—with a fixed gaze that didn’t wander.  The occasional burst of warm, friendly laughter drifted back to Arthur’s table.

            The longer Curt spent talking to that woman, the more certain Arthur became that he wasn’t coming back.  It only made sense.  Why would he want to sit and talk with someone like Arthur?  He was dull, entirely uninteresting, and Curt had probably outgrown men a long time ago.  Brian had to have been the exception, not the rule, no matter what Curt’s brother might have pressured him into when he was still a boy.  Arthur couldn’t even keep a regular man’s interest; how was he supposed to gain the interest of someone like Curt Wild, even for a few minutes?  Only madness or the arrogance of youth could ever have made him believe that fantasy on the rooftops had been reality.

            When the woman stepped in closer and planted a deep kiss on Curt’s lips, Arthur slammed his eyes shut, fighting not to cry.  He had known it would go like this, but he hadn’t wanted to believe it.  And he didn’t want to see that.  Of course Curt was free to sleep with whoever he wanted, but seeing him with a woman was agony.  Arthur decided he wasn’t going to open his eyes again until the barman came over to kick him out at closing time.  To ensure he wouldn’t have to see any more.

            The sound of a body slipping into the seat opposite him startled Arthur out of that plan.  When his eyes popped open, he found that Curt had returned, his new bottle of beer in hand.  “What’s that look about?” Curt asked, sounding annoyed.

            “I just…um…”  Arthur’s eyes cast about the bar, but he didn’t see the woman now.  “That woman…”

            Curt chuckled.  “She’s a regular here.  Got a thing for me.  Not that she even knows who I am.  I might fuck her if she did, but as it is it’s insulting.”

            Arthur nodded, not sure where that even left him.  “So…um…you don’t—you don’t sleep with men anymore?”

            “When did I say that?”

            “Well…I thought…I remember reading that you didn’t really, um, buy into the whole bisexual thing…”

            A deep sigh escaped Curt’s lips.  Even though it had been some time since he put out his cigarette, the breath that wafted across the table towards Arthur was still heavily loaded with smoke.  “I was pissed off that a bunch of kids who’d never fuck their own sex were calling themselves bisexual.”  He shook his head.  “Never said _I_ wasn’t.  Though I don’t know if that’s really what I’d call myself.”

            “What would you call yourself, then?”

            Curt shrugged.  “Depends when you’re asking.  Sometimes I think it was all just a beard, and I’m gay…but then I’ll meet some chick I really wanna fuck, and not just to make people shut up.”  He took a drink from his new beer.  “I guess that means I’m bisexual.  What about you?  You ever fuck girls?”

            Arthur shook his head.  “Tried a few times back when I was a teenager, but it just wasn’t me.”  He smiled sadly.  “I wanted it to be.  I wanted to be bisexual…”  Like Brian.  He had wanted to like girls, because Brian did.  Yet another way he had failed.

            “Nothing wrong with that,” Curt said, smiling at him so warmly that it made Arthur’s heart lurch.  “Everyone wants to be someone they’re not at least once in their lives.  It’s claiming to _be_ someone you’re not that’s the problem.”  He glanced over his shoulder at the door back out of the seedy little bar.  “That’s the problem with…”  Curt bit his lip, and turned back to look at Arthur.  “…certain people today.”

            Arthur nodded.  What else could he do?  Any surveillance that Tommy Stone might usually have over Curt didn’t seem to be present, but openly discussing the fact that he was actually Brian Slade was surely a bad idea.  “I don’t know how far I can go in condemning that sort of thing,” Arthur sighed.  “It’d be hypocritical.”

            Curt laughed.  “This normal shell is just an act, and you’re still a glitter boy inside?”

            Despite that he could feel himself blush, some days Arthur did still feel that way, over the past month anyway.  “I just meant…I pretend in front of my co-workers—in front of strangers on the street—that I’m the same as them, that I’d rather go home to a girlfriend or a wife than to another man…”

            “Yeah.”  Curt shook his head.  “That’s a different kind of thing.  You have to do that if you don’t wanna get knifed or some shit.”

            That was a chilling thought.  Arthur had never imagined that his sexuality could get him killed, but there _were_ cases of homophobic violence reported every once in a while, and undoubtedly far more that went unreported, or even unrecognised.  The fact that the worst he’d ever received was a bloody nose was just another way he was actually very lucky.

            “So, how’d a glam fanboy living with a group as crazy as the Flaming Creatures end up a square reporter in New York?” Curt suddenly asked, snapping Arthur out of a prolonged silence.

            He shrugged.  “It’s not easy to summarise.”

            “I got all night,” Curt said, with a surprisingly warm smile.

            Despite how little he liked to talk about himself, Arthur found himself slowly telling the whole story.  The arguments and tensions as the music scene changed and the Creatures found themselves adrift, trying to create a new mode, find some way to make their music fit in with what audiences wanted without compromising their shifting personal visions.  How he had preferred running away to risking watching his friends break up.  The pathetic odd jobs that had utterly failed to support him, the hope of a new life—a better life—in another country.  The slow, creeping shame at everything he had so passionately embraced during his glam years as he became inured to the constrictive, corporate world of Reynolds-era New York.

            Curt smiled gently when the story was over, and patted Arthur’s hand warmly.  “Don’t let it get to you.  This city’s been chewing people up and spitting them out for years.  Getting a bit mangled by it’s only normal.  You just have to find your stride, pick up the pieces, and put yourself back together.  It’s up to you if you end up the same person or a new one when that’s over with.”  He let out a deep sigh, with another small glance at the door.  “Some people _choose_ to be someone else when it’s all over.”

            Arthur nodded.  “I’ve been thinking about my past a lot more in the past month.  I…don’t know if I could ever be who I was back then again.  But I don’t know if I’m really who I want to be right now, either.”

            “There’s nothing wrong with that,” Curt assured him.  “You’ve got a lifetime to discover yourself.”

            “I suppose so.  What about you?  Are you…who you want to be?”

            “More or less.”  Curt grinned raggedly.  “You know how a song sounds different before the pieces are mixed together?  When it’s just the vocal or just the guitar?  Time was, I felt like a whole song, the final mix.  Lately…I’m just one track.  I need to pull the rest in, get a new mix going.”  He chuckled.  “Sorry; that was a pretty tortured metaphor, wasn’t it?”

            “A little,” Arthur agreed, “but I know what you mean.  The question is, what kind of song is it?”

            “Dunno.”  Curt shook his head.  “It’s just the guitar right now.  It needs the vocals before I’ll know what it’s about.”

            “What’s the style?”

            “Oh, it’s my style,” Curt assured him.  “I’d never want to be any other type.”

            “Then that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

            “Maybe it is,” Curt agreed.

 

***

 

            They spent half the night talking over enough beers that Arthur was very glad he didn’t even know _how_ to drive.  “You’re not driving home, right?” he asked Curt as they left the closing bar together.

            Curt laughed.  “Met me coming outta the subway, didn’t you?”

            “Oh, right.  Forgot.  Sorry.”  Arthur laughed.  Maybe a little too much.  “I might’ve had one or so more than I really should’ve done.”

            “I’d never have guessed,” Curt chuckled.  “You gonna be all right getting home?”

            Arthur nodded.  “I’m right as the rain.”  Then he bit his lip, wishing he’d had the sense to say that he wasn’t, to suggest that Curt ought to take him back to his own flat for the night.  “Um…”

            “What?”

            “D’you…er…think maybe we could do this again sometime?”  The words came out so quickly that they almost slurred together.

            “You asking for a date, or just meeting over drinks?”

            “A date.”  Arthur shook his head feverishly.  “Or just drinks, if you—”

            “Seems like years since I’ve been on a date,” Curt mused.  “I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like.”  He smiled at Arthur.  “A refresher might be fun.”

            Arthur’s smile was so wide that he felt like his mouth was trying to split his face in half.

            “You know, you look pretty hot smiling like that,” Curt commented as he lit up a cigarette.

            Flush with excitement, Arthur fumbled about in his bag for a minute, trying to find something to write on.  Eventually, he found his pad of paper, and wrote his name and number on it.  “Um…call me?” he suggested, handing it over.  “I don’t trust myself much right now…”

            Curt laughed, and held out his hand.  “Here, gimme that pen.”

            Arthur did so, and Curt wrote something on the lower half of the paper, then tore it off and returned it with the pen.  It was another phone number.  “Curt…”

            “Just in case,” Curt said.  Then he said goodnight, and headed off down the street, away from the subway station.

            Arthur just stared down at the phone number in his hand, grinning like an idiot.

            Yes, nothing had happened nine years on the rooftops of London.

            But now he had a real chance.

            This time, he was going to make his dreams come true.


	3. Off the Deep End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While this version still contains the core conceit that the rooftop scene was only in Arthur's imagination, it goes much, much further. Like, to a ridiculous extent.
> 
> It is completely bonkers.
> 
> You have been warned.

            “Thank you for coming at such short notice, Miss Hazelbourne,” Dr. Schaden said, holding his hand out towards her.

            Shannon gave him a tight smile, but didn’t shake his hand; the man always smelled like ethanol, and his hands were so dry they rasped against the skin, despite how moist—slimy, even—his face always looked.  “You said you’ve learned something from the suspect?”

            “Yes, yes, come this way, please,” the doctor said, leading her down the sterile hallway towards the secure ward.

            Shannon flashed her security pass at the armed guards on the way past; they shouldn’t have _needed_ to see it, since she was with Dr. Schaden, but it never hurt to be sure they knew she had clearance.  At the end of the hall, the doctor opened an unlocked door, revealing a tall, slender man sleeping peacefully on one of the asylum’s bare cots, his ankle shackled to one of the legs of the bed.  He was still wearing his drab street clothes, unremarkable but for the bright green pin that flashed from his collar.  Even from across the room, Shannon recognised the pin:  it used to belong to Brian, but she hadn’t seen him with it since that particularly horrible day…

            “This is the man who discovered Mr. Stone’s secret?” she asked, looking back at the doctor.

            Dr. Schaden nodded.  “Yes, the MPs brought him in a few days ago, and I’ve been interviewing him extensively since then.”  He took a clipboard off the wall and handed it to her.  “He’s been quite cooperative.”

            Shannon glanced down at the pages on the clipboard.  Name, occupation, basic medical information, the usual.  He was from Manchester, according to the paper, which seemed to clinch that he was indeed the man who had asked that hateful question.  It shouldn’t have surprised her that he was the reporter who had been out looking for Brian Slade’s current whereabouts—nor did it.  “What have you learned?” she asked, looking at the doctor, then paused.  “Should we talk about this elsewhere?” Shannon added, glancing back at the sleeping man.

            “Oh, no, he’s sleeping off the sodium amytal.  He’ll be out for hours.”

            “Truth serum?”  Shannon almost laughed.  How juvenile!

            “Well, his story needed verification that couldn’t be had any other way.”

            “Oh?”

            The doctor nodded.  “When I asked him to explain about his interest in Mr. Stone’s past, he started to tell me about the assignment he had been given by his editor, but quickly got sidetracked into telling me about his history with glam rock and Brian Slade.”

            “He has a history with B—Mr. Slade?”

            “Of a sort.”  Dr. Schaden chuckled.  “He gave a long and intricately detailed history of the last ten years.  Ten years and a few months, I should say.”  He shook his head.  “Said he ran away from home when his father caught him—well—learned he had an infatuation with Mr. Slade.”  Why did Brian always attract _that sort_?  Shannon had to fight not to shudder in revulsion.  “He claimed that as soon as he arrived in London, he went straight into a nightclub—still carrying his suitcase!—attracted the attention of the band on stage just by mere his presence, and was soon invited into their lives, as a combination groupie, roadie, roommate and…ah…sexual companion.”

            Shannon looked over at the sleeping man.  According to the file, he was a few years younger than she was, so ten years ago he’d have been barely more than a boy, seventeen or eighteen.  If he was as pretty then as he was now, she could easily imagine some of the less savoury glam bands wanting to turn him into their sex toy.  “I don’t see much history with Mr. Slade in that story,” she said, looking back at the doctor.  Better to cut him off before he could go into any detail.

            “Oh, yes, it’s barely started!” he laughed.  “His new…friends…took him along to a Brian Slade concert.  The fateful—or maybe I should say _fatal_ —concert.”

            “And?  That’s hardly a connection.” Most of the fans in the audience that day had been to multiple concerts, according to the papers at the time.

            “He claims he saw the man firing the gun,” the doctor agreed, nodding.  “And that, a year later, he saw Mr. Slade backstage at a concert where Curt Wild was performing.”

            Surely no one had seen that!  “What rubbish,” Shannon commented, shaking her head.  “There can’t be any truth to such claims.”

            “Well, here’s the interesting part:  we had him hooked up to a lie detector the whole time.  Not a single thing he said triggered as a lie.”

            “What…?  But…”

            The doctor laughed.  “He even claimed that after the show, he and Curt Wild went up onto the roof for a…uh…romantic encounter.”  That much, Shannon could believe.  The man was an animal that would shag anything.  Brian should never have wasted his time on him, not even professionally.  “Now, you have to understand, I was sceptical about the whole story.”

            “I should think so.”

            “But the lie detector came up negative.”  Dr. Schaden shook his head.  “That’s why I administered the sodium amytal to him.  See if I could get to the real story.”

            “And did you?”

            “Well, I certainly got to _a_ story.  Whether it’s any more real than what he said before remains to be seen.  But I think so.”

            Shannon checked her watch.  She had already been here much too long.  He would be waiting for her.  “I don’t have a lot of time to burn, Dr. Schaden.”

            “Yes, yes, of course.  Do forgive me.”  He smiled weakly.  “Under the sodium amytal, his story remained the same up until his arrival in London.  But even though one of the performers on stage still blew a kiss in his direction, under the drug’s effects, he said that the band never emerged into the audience, and that instead he got drunk and was robbed of all he had in the world.  He set about getting any job he could, no matter how menial or how poor the pay.  Though he didn’t use the word to describe it, he even stooped to prostitution.”

            A reformed _prostitute_ stumbled onto that precious secret!?  Could there be a worse, more degrading insult?

            “Even under the sodium amytal, he still said he had been at the final Brian Slade concert, and saw the gun going off,” the doctor added.  “I’m not sure if that’s a facet of his delusion that he can’t let go of, even at a subconscious level, or if it’s actually true.”  He shrugged.  “Apparently, he really was at the concert a year later, as well.”

            “How would a prostitute afford tickets to so many concerts?”  They weren’t exactly cheap.

            “A man bought him the ticket to the Slade concert in exchange for sexual favours,” the doctor said, “and he didn’t have tickets to the other concert.  Said he was in the alley beside the concert, just in case—”

            “In case of what?”

            “Someone losing their ticket?  A band member looking for a cheap and easy lay?  He didn’t seem sure what he had been hoping for.”  The doctor laughed.  “Apparently, he found it, though.  Saw Curt Wild going in the side door, and was instantly smitten.  Followed him right in, without anyone noticing, and watched half the concert from backstage.  Only he got too close, trying to meet Wild after his performance; Mrs. Slade noticed him, and had him thrown out.”

            “What was Mandy Slade doing there?”

            The doctor shook his head.  “Listening to Curt Wild perform, apparently.  He said he’d been standing so near to her that he’d seen when she spotted her husband—sorry, ex-husband—across the stage, followed her line of sight and saw him, too.  Since he said that both with and without the drug, I’m inclined to believe there might be some truth to it.”

            Shannon scowled.  “How, exactly, do these two stories reconcile?”

            “I’m not sure,” Dr. Schaden admitted.  “In the first story, he claimed to have gotten his degree at a London university in bits and pieces over time, before coming to America to pursue a career in journalism.  Under the sodium amytal, however, he admitted that he had never attended college, and had been taught what he knew in off-hours by a college professor with whom he was living; paying his tuition with his body, I suppose you’d say.”

            Shannon would have preferred not to say that, or anything like it.  “Then he got his job under false claims?”

            “Yes, that’s right.  I checked with his paper and with the university in London.  The paper was told he graduated in 1978, and the university confirmed that he had never even been enrolled.”

            “Well, then all we need to do is expose his deceit—”

            “It’s not that simple, Miss Hazelbourne.”

            “Oh, no?”

            “No,” the doctor insisted.  “He truly believes the story he told me before.  The time spent living in sin with an entire rock band, the midnight encounter with Curt Wild, the college degree, he thinks they’re all true.”

            “That doesn’t change anything.  He will still lose his job and his credibility once the falsehood is exposed.”

            “Well, yes, but what a waste of such a fascinating case!”

            Shannon sighed.  “What are you talking about, Dr. Schaden?”

            “I’d like to keep him here as a patient for a while.  I want to learn more about this second life he’s generated for himself.  How he did so— _why_ he did so—what keeps it stable and in place in his mind.  I’ve never seen a case quite like this in the medical journals; usually, if a patient has imagined up another life history, their instability is obvious, and no one doubts that they’re off their rocker, if you’ll pardon the colloquialism.  But this fellow seems like the picture of stability, and all his co-workers think he’s the most normal and boring man they’ve ever met.  Don’t you want to know why that is?”

            “No, I can’t say that I do.”  All she wanted to know was that he wasn’t going to ruin everything that she had built to protect the only man in the world who mattered.

            Dr. Schaden frowned.  “I’m distressed to see such a young woman so utterly devoid of curiosity.  But surely Mr. Stone and the authorities won’t object to my holding this young man a while longer?”

            Shannon smiled.  “No, I can’t see why we would.  You can hold him forever, for all I care.”  Inside an asylum, he could never ruin anything.

            “I doubt he’ll need permanent treatment,” the doctor said, with a smile.  “I’m sure I’ll be able to cure him of his bizarre delusions.”

            “Yes, do whatever you like.  But you do have recordings of him confessing his criminal activities, don’t you?”

            “Of course.  Given why he was arrested, every interaction with the patient has been captured on film as a matter of routine precaution.  But I doubt he can still be held accountable for acts of prostitution after so many years.”

            “Even if he can’t, legally, he can still be convicted in the court of public opinion,” Shannon pointed out.  No reader would ever believe a journalist who was a former prostitute.

            Dr. Schaden nodded.  “I’ll have his testimony under the sodium amytal copied, and send the copy to Mr. Stone.”

            “Thank you, doctor.”  Shannon smiled.  “I believe we’re through here.”


End file.
